PracticePanther Legal Software Reviews

PracticePanther is intuitive and very user friendly. It has a ton of features that expedite minuscule tasks and free up admin time. It syncs with all my favorite resources, like QBO, MailChimp, and Box, making communication with clients a lot easier and keeps routine mailings operational. If you use a lot of form templates, the template builder is a major time saver and cuts down on user error and oversights. I use this program every day in my law office and am very grateful for how easy it is. Even better, the customer support team is phenomenal. I rarely have any issues with the program (it is easy to use), but when I run into something I need help with, a quick message to the PP team is responded to within minutes and the problem is solved or at a minimum I am given an update and expected time of completion. I couldn't recommend this program more to a solo or small legal practice.

Nothing, the team is constantly updating its software and programs that it connects to. They provide online videos to help and I frequently learn of new ways to use the program from regular updates by the team.

It worked well, and allowed relatively easy billing and access to client payment history, but it cost more than Clio.

When I decided to switch to Clio due to the cost difference, I could not leave. They took the money from my credit card and would not refund it. Practice Panther's alias is Hotel California. You can check out but you can never leave. My advice is don't check in.

Practice Panther has two features I really like. First, the design of the software makes it easy to work with. Second, it comes ready to use "out of the box," with very little learning curve required.

Practice Panther is for generalists, in my opinion. If you are an estate planner, you can use it. Family law, no problem. Real estate law, you can't go wrong. However, if you want specialized features unique to a particular practice area, then Practice Panther is probably not going to suit your needs. I switched from it because I needed software that was tailored specifically to personal injury.

We like the client portal where we can send clients messages and documents. The software is not easy to use. The reports are not user friendly, they do not meet our needs. It is difficult to maneuver.

I have to keep a separate data base for my clients because there is no way to print an envelope from PP. Our software automatically renewed annually and we had a staff member who left our company shortly thereafter. We decided not to replace the position. I contacted PP almost immediately thereafter and have been trying to get a refund of that user's account fees and after a month, they finally got back to me and they will not refund the annual subscription fee. So, if you are on an annual plan, you cannot reduce the number of user accounts you have. The three way trust account reconciliation is not a true reconciliation that complies with the Rules of Professional Responsibility, so we have to still reconcile using other software. The email sync only works with limited versions of Outlook. When we signed up, we were assured their customer service was top notch and the longer I am with them, the longer it takes to get answers. Many times, they will close my help tickets without answering the questions. If you leave a bad review for their company they will call and address the review immediately, but they will not address the underlying issue that resulted in the bad review. Despite me raising my concerns over the software, no changes have been made.

That it made time tracking and billing easy

Too many glitches in the software that caused serious issues with my pricing and billing

Super easy to use! We love that we can create custom fields for a contact or matter and have really enjoyed the automation portion of the software. The templates are easy to create and automatically pull the information from the contact and matter sections that we need.

Under Matter, instead of editing the whole section, it would be nice if I could hoover over the field I only need to update.

I also wish I could highlight text in the matter or notes section.

I create multiple matters under one client and some of the information in the fields is always the same. It would be nice if I could select an option so any time I create a new matter for that client, the information in the matter auto fills for any new case going forward.

Unlike a number of the cheaper practice management software programs on the market today, Practice Panther has a wide range of functions within the software which are easy to use. Instead of just having "Tasks" or "to-dos", PP allows you to create Activities which can be "Events" "E-mails" "Phone calls" or "Tasks". On the Task front, PP allows you to set sub-reminders that can send you e-mails or text messages in advance, like say "7 days before," and "3 days before," for a filing deadline. I also think it is pretty fantastic that PP shows whether a time entry has been completed for EVERY SINGLE ACTIVITY marked "completed" or "in progress". This would be incredibly useful for practitioners (mostly civil) managing staff and trying to deal with staff not accounting for all of their time in billing. The "mail sync" function is also easy to use, and allows you to e-mail out of your native software (MS Outlook, GMAIL, etc) and simply "bcc" the client matter itself. When you do this, the e-mail is automatically saved into the matter. Almost every other program out there that I have used requires you to use their client messaging portal to get the same functionality.

The templates are easy to use for creating documents to merge out of PP also. Think client engagement letters, releases, and basic letterheads that you use in every file. We don't use PP for accepting payments so I cannot comment on that portion.

1. Matter pre-bills or invoicing. In many civil cases there will be a time when you need to prepare a billing report to present to the court solely for a claim of attorney's fees. In other software that I have used, you can run a report for a set period of time or type of billing entries which will then create a printable draft invoice-looking document. You would then be able to slap an exhibit sticker on that document and use it for your attorney's fee request. I haven't found a way to easily do this in PP yet, and it seems like you would have to utilize a draft invoice which captures all time billed in the matter. I could be wrong.

2. No Batch Entry System for E-mails. PP has a GREAT syncing system that works with your native e-mail so you can BCC messages into the matter when you send or receive them. However, if you forget to include the mail-sync in your BCC line, or don't forward a message to the mail-sync, there is no easy way to subsequently get the e-mails into the matter in PP. What I mean is this: say you have a number of e-mails from someone that weren't saved into a client PP matter and instead lived in your Outlook before the client actually hired. You would have to manually forward each one of your emails to the mail-sync to get them into PP.

Additionally, if you are a federal criminal lawyer and use CORRLINKS to communicate with your clients you will know that you can't forward out of that system. PP doesn't let you copy/paste emails so your stuck.

It's very hard to pinpoint what I like the most about PracticePanther since there are so many features I rely on for my law practice. I very much like that I can find everything related to a contact or matter in one place. All emails and their attachments, notes, documents, billing, payments, calendar, "to do" list (Tasks), time entries, and communications for a contact and matter can be found in PracticePanther. I use the templates and workflows on a daily basis, which save me time and keep me on track. With a simple click I can send an online questionnaire to a client that, once completed, is kept in the client account.

The tags allow me to filter and label my contacts and matters any way I want. I use PantherPay for online payments which is very easy and shows all payments in the billing account immediately.

I also like that new features are made available regularly - the software is always improving!

1) Would like for clients to start, save, and continue an intake form at a later time and have them receive a copy of their answers after being submitted.

2) The timer buffers endlessly if the page has not been refreshed. I realize you are working on this. :-/

3) If a client has a PP account with another law firm, that client cannot open a new account with my firm using that same email address. Is there a way to fix this?

4) Would love to have conditional/dynamic fields in the intake forms.

Before PracticePanther, there was no aggregation of data that would allow me to analyze in real-time how we were performing, and we were leaving a lot of pennies on the table because of it. We were able to take an outdated, paper-based reporting system and modernize it. This allowed us to get a clear picture and make adjustments as needed. In a world where there is more remote work, it becomes more important than ever to be able to track those things so that your business is maximizing its profitability and efficiency with its employees.

The most stressful part for us was getting all the data into the system in a format that would work. Once it’s in there and rolling, it cuts down on so much work. There’s a little pain upfront, but you’ll find that with any software like this, that it takes a bit of time to get it right, once it’s in there you really do wonder how you lived without it.

The look and feel was one of our deciding factors to go with PracticePanther. It’s incredibly intuitive, and most of your data is available whenever you need it. In immigration law, there’s a lot of very important dates and information that need to be tracked, so being able to create all the custom fields we needed was a big win. I also love how easy it is to track our billing. We can automatically track who has paid, and then follow-up with anyone we still need to collect from. Giving extra transparency to our clients really showcases our ability to use technology to enhance our services.

When starting with any new software you need to approach it with some patience. There’s a lot of training available, both videos and text-based. So getting ramped-up and knowing that we needed to experiment with customization and intake forms, and get the team to support using it was going to take some time.

Beautiful layout, easy to use, functions as a basic CRM, matter and time management, and billing program all in one.

Flat fee billing is not well thought out, and the billing module presents clients with a reckoning of my operating account as well as their trust account. (I understand Panther may have made the operating account info optional by now, or that is in their near term plan.)